Along Route 74: Vacation mishaps normal for some of us

When May rolls around some of us, for the first time, really start thinking about where we’re going on vacation this summer.

While I do engage in that thought process, another pops up – What’s going to go wrong this time?

You see, there are two places where I, along with family and friends, share the title of “Murphy’s Law Poster Children.” One is when I have anything to do with a wedding, a subject written on in the past.

The other has to do with planning a recreational excursion. Here are a few examples -- names have been removed to protect the guilty -- of mishaps along the way:

On a camping trip, in a trailer where couch cushions double as a bed, the cushions were set on top of the family station wagon to air out. When someone went to the store a little later, not noticing, the cushions/mattresses were never seen again.

Another time, a brand new electric frying pan was tried out and it knocked out all the power in a third of a campground.

There was once a spare tire that wasn’t tied down on top of a car and it blew off breaking windows of the camping trailer it was pulling.

Once on a golf trip, one station wagon in our party heading for the Santee, S.C., area included a group of highly educated older gentlemen who were having such a good time riding along they forget where they were headed and were nearly to Savannah before realizing they were on the wrong track.

Canoes are always trouble. Once a cousin – who wasn’t supposed to get his inner ears wet – was dumped in a lake when the other person in it stood up for some reason.

On another occasion, camping underneath a canoe while it was raining one night on an island in Badin Lake (N.C.), a couple of young Scouts made a discovery – their sleeping bags were inundated with red ants who were none too happy.

On a different trek to the beach, a family member had been given the wrong key to the Ford beach house and couldn’t get in, leading to a motel stay.

Back to scouting – on a nine-day hike in the mountains of New Mexico, the last day was supposed to be the shortest walk yet to the final campsite. Instead the group got lost and had to scale down a mountainside running into rattlesnakes and avoiding the cactus, then walk through a desert-like area with no water in 90-degree heat.

Well, this gives you an idea why my favorite pastime now is just sitting at the beach and doing as little as possible when off. Do you blame me?